


The News Is Bad

by jannar



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Angst, Asami-centric, Canon Compliant, Drabble, F/F, Flash Fiction, Implied Romance, Reflection, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 15:50:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3387464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jannar/pseuds/jannar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times Asami’s heart sinks, and once it lifts again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The News Is Bad

**Author's Note:**

> I think this is the shortest thing I've ever written.
> 
> Cross-posted on Tumblr before I had an account here.

When her father’s eyes crumble like the buildings he has designed, she knows the news is bad, the Sato child wise beyond her years.

 

When his rage builds to destroy his dignity like the fire that incinerated their lives, she knows the news is bad, the Sato child wise beyond her years.

 

At six years old, she gets the news that her mother is gone, and she doesn’t have the words for it, but her heart sinks. Roads and skyscrapers are built with relative ease. Lives are not. And even at six, she knows the news is bad.

 

\--

 

When the Avatar turns to the rest of their group on the airship, her eyes full of dread and determination, Asami knows the news is bad. Those blue eyes hold volumes and Korra is bad at keeping the covers closed.

 

Her insides creak and groan like an engine needing repairs when the words come. _I think you’ll agree._ The screws start falling out and her heart spills into the rest of her chest. _The only plan that will work is for me to give myself up._ This body had rarely failed her before, but suddenly Asami realized what a poorly designed machine it was.

 

 _The world has been out of balance for far too long._ Counterweights clang downwards.

 _It **needs** the Air Nation back again._ Spark plugs blow.

 _I can’t let Zaheer destroy it and everyone we love._ But how instead can you let it destroy you?

 

But that’s Korra, Asami thinks. She’d rather have her own body beaten and battered beyond even Asami’s skill with a welding torch than see a single other in pain. And so perhaps it’s a functioning machine after all – even though she feels her own breaking down to her toes when Korra steps out, boots falling slower than time itself, to use the radio. Still Asami hopes beyond hope that she can be there to put the pieces back together again.

 

\--

 

When Hiroshi – the former prisoner, now pardoned; the former breaker of her own heart, now pardoned – flicks only one of two ejection switches, she knows the news is bad.

 

Metallic hands fall swifter than the gavel of the judge, and as she’s crying out, her own flesh fingers reaching for a future she wants to form and design and remake as she did the streets of this city, rather than a future she can’t control where lives are more quickly destroyed than redeemed and her now-forgiven father has been unmade.

 

How many times has she crushed mosquitoes on her own skin during warm solemn nights? She had never been afraid of motor oil, viscous and impenetrable; why should she be afraid of a pin drop’s worth of blood on an upper arm? She will always have second thoughts now, for even mosquitos carrying diseases like rage and holding grudges have families. By now, she’s used to her heart falling, as she is to a welcoming ground in the arms of this old found parachute.

 

\--

 

When the whole of Republic City is washed anew in a cannon of bright yellow light, much brighter yellow than the fading bruises on her body and much brighter than she can see the future without Korra being, she knows, knows deeper than she knows the way a blueprint is drawn or the feeling of the Avatar’s fingers drawing so softly and timidly over her own with those words that have never been said and always understood, that the news is bad.

 

When they call her name towards a new bridge between the worlds (“a bridge between the worlds”…is that not what Korra is, too?) and no response comes, no cheeky grin or sarcastic comment or even broken bones, she knows the news is bad.

 

But instead she hobbles out, two bodies instead of one, and their eyes meet over the rubble of broken machines and broken bodies and a crater so big it could hold all of the times her heart has sunk, the news is good this time and Asami’s heart fills back up again.


End file.
